


and sleep in its claws

by spoke



Category: Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:33:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2823533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Emerald Twilight cannot catch a break politically, while Indigo Cloud continues to demonstrate its talent in attracting predators.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and sleep in its claws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snarkydame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarkydame/gifts).



> Many thanks to my beta, Nary, for catching all the little things I'd missed and reassuring me that all was not as awful as I thought! Any remaining mistakes are all my fault. 
> 
> Also thanks to everyone else who kept me encouraged and on track; you know who are: <333 to all of you.

As she fell through the branches, she saw Moon diving after her. For a moment she saw Malachite in him vividly, the older queen’s control and fury reflected in the consort. The sound of the battle and even the branches whipping by her head faded, and she heard Celadon’s voice as she struggled to right herself, asserting that her brother was accustomed to defending himself and others. That the incident on their first journey was not an intentional slight, but his doing what he had always done.

Then she shifted, wondering for a panicked moment why, just before something dark hit her from the side.

She woke to an awareness of pain and sharp if momentary relief that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. As she lay there, she became aware that something was wrong. Her thoughts were dragging. Dangerous. She felt weighed down, and her warriors should be there to tell her what was happening. All she could hear was something heavy moving, and it felt too close.

She had been leaving Opal Night. It had gone about as well as she could expect, given the nature of her first departure. Moon. He had apologized for her, claimed to start the fight. Had started the fight, not the point. He shouldn’t have been taking credit, shielding her, in the first place. Wasn’t for a consort to... wasn’t for a consort...

To dive into a fight again, when a hunting party was attacked by something unexpectedly dangerous. The memory rushed back in vivid detail, her eyes snapping open to take in the canopy of shifting leaves and a disturbing lack of light. How far had they fallen? She hissed in pain as she tried to sit up, and hissed again at clawed hands holding her down. Moon’s voice hissed back, though she could barely hear him, “Quiet, it’s still hunting.”

Seething, she lay back, trying to gauge how bad the damage might be while listening for the creature. Her side felt battered, but nothing seemed broken or torn; she’d probably saved her left wing shifting when she had. “Surprised you caught me.” she whispered, as quietly as she could manage.

Moon twitched, letting out a little breath that sounded as if he’d just managed not to hiss. As quietly, he whispered back, “Consorts fly quickly. Not the first time I’ve caught someone falling.” After a moment’s pause while the sounds of the creature moved a little further off, he added like an afterthought, “Pulling you away from it was hard. You’re heavier than me, and you didn’t want to stop fighting it.”

Tempest blinked, tilting her head to look straight at him. “I... was fighting it still? I don’t remember that.”

Moon hissed again, and this time she could hear the frustration in it. “That’s great. That’s perfect. Does your head hurt at all?”

He kept peering back through the leaves of their accidental shelter. If it had moved far enough that they could go and he was just being overly cautious... “My head wasn’t hit, consort. I am thinking perfectly clearly.” she managed not to growl.

His eyes closed and he breathed out again. “It wasn’t hit that you remember, it wasn’t hit that I could see, but if we’re both wrong and you get dizzy climbing, this thing is probably going to eat us both.”

And still the obvious solution didn’t seem to occur to him. “Then go. Get. Help.” He looked back again, upset? Of all the stupid things. She hissed, “Your queen was up there fighting it too, as well as all our warriors. Go back up and get them, and if I really need help, they can do it. A consort should not-”

He interrupted with a low growl, barely audible and yet the shock stopped her mid-sentence. “A consort shouldn’t know what he’s doing? A consort shouldn’t be able to fight? What, exactly, am I doing wrong here, Tempest?”

He was glaring at her, breathing hard, and again she could see Malachite in him, and Celadon too. The resemblance was vivid, and two things occurred to her simultaneously - what Ice had been trying to teach her about the way a queen’s connection to her court influenced all its people, and the fighter’s pragmatism of Opal Night. ‘Your temper will shape theirs’ she had said, and ‘when a queen gives way to her temper, her people follow suit.’

She had been judging his behavior against consorts of her own court, but what if... she gestured vaguely, trying to think how to phrase this against the surprising insight that he was proud to know how to hunt, how to fight. “A consort should be aware that his position within the court will make this a disaster, if he should be harmed, where a foreign queen might have a simple hunting accident. Your willingness, your ability to defend yourself, don’t change the fact that you’re not supposed to have to. That I or Jade or likely both of us could be blamed if you’re hurt.”

He looked a little shocked, almost offended, and for a moment she was afraid she had misjudged him again. Then his shoulders hunched in a bit, wings curling tighter, and he looked over his shoulder at the leaves. “Just... be quiet okay? None of the warriors even recognized this thing, it looked like some kind of an armored cross between a tree frog and a lizard. And we fell a long way, farther while you and the thing were fighting, so I have no idea how high I’ll need to climb.”

He grimaced like it was some kind of a sacrifice, but he finally started climbing, and Tempest felt like she could breathe freely for the first time since she’d seen the thing leap out of the trees. Now if she could avoid telling Malachite how her only consort offspring risked his life for her sake...

~ ~ ~

Chime was still trying to work out the distance the thing had gone when Root saw Moon and called them over. Beacon stopped by Root and waited for the others to catch up to them while Jade crashed down several branches, landing in front of Moon with a barely restrained fury that would have had any normal consort flinching back. Being Moon, he just gave her that look that she suspected he did not realize he’d picked up off of Stone. “I would ask what you were thinking if I didn’t already know,” she hissed for his ears only, spines rattling, and then spoke loudly enough for Tempest’s warrior to hear. “She’s alive?”

Moon sighed, his spines twitching in irritation. Equally quietly, he replied, “Oh, was I thinking?” He grimaced, spines flattening, before continuing for Beacon, “She was injured fighting that thing, but there didn’t seem to be any broken bones. She sounds sluggish though, and I’m not sure that thing didn’t rattle her brain loose while she was trying to tear its skull open.”

Which sounded like Moon’s way of admitting that she had been making perfect sense and he just didn’t want to hear it. Ignoring that, she replied,“She can’t come back up on her own, then. You’ll have to lead us to her. Then you can go back to Opal Night with Balm and Chime and tell them there’s been an injury.” Chime and Balm nodded, while Moon just looked irritated. She expected him to object that he could fly back faster alone, but he said nothing except a suspiciously even ‘alright’.

It was already going to come to Malachite’s attention; the first thing they needed her to see was that Moon was safe and uninjured. Mostly.

Beacon stepped forward at that. “Dart and Prize can go with them, as soon as they make it back.” She looked between Jade and Moon, clearly considering, before addressing Jade again. “Did the consort notice anything else dangerous between us and my queen?”

Jade would have been more pleased with the small nod to treating Moon properly had there not been more immediate concerns. Even if it was because they were still in his birthqueen’s territory, and no one could know if they were being observed. “I think everything remotely dangerous got out ahead of whatever that was. Except us.”

There was a distinct resemblance to Tempest in the way Beacon tilted her head; clutchmates perhaps, which was something to be thankful for. Given the basically even temperaments of everyone involved, they might still get away with nothing more politically charged than a hunting accident.

~ ~ ~

They reached Tempest without any further incident, mostly because Beacon hissed at the male warriors as soon as they showed up. True, she also muttered something to them, probably an explanation of what they’d decided - but the hissing was unexpectedly normal. It might have been any of her own female warriors dealing with the males. Jade hid her amusement by focusing on breaking larger obstacles out of her path; she was going to need the space if she had to carry Tempest out of here.

It was also good for burning off some of the energy she wouldn’t be able to use fighting the damn monster, or Tempest.

She had worried ‘further incident’ would include Moon being stubborn, so it was a bit of a surprise when he just nodded and started back up through the canopy as soon as they reached Tempest, leaving the warriors chosen to go with him to startle and scurry after him.

Which left her standing there with Vine and Song, while Tempest’s warriors spoke to their queen quietly. Jade remembered that the female was Prize, but hadn’t managed to recall the male’s name before Tempest swayed upright.

Jade hissed softly, addressing Tempest perhaps a bit too politely, “Please tell me you’re not going to be unrealistic about this.”

“Don’t tell me you think I’m going to allow myself to be carried like a fledgling.” Tempest snarled, which wasn’t as impressive as it could have been given that the snarl didn’t quite conceal the slurring in her voice. Maybe Moon’s unexpected cooperation was because he’d realized how bad this could be. And she couldn’t knock Tempest out to carry her, with no way to know if that would make it worse.

Forcing her spines down, Jade replied in what she hoped was an even tone, “Fine. You can shift to Arbora and I’ll climb behind you with the warriors.”

Tempest nodded carefully, barely lifting her spines before shifting and carefully moving past Jade to climb.

~ ~ ~

Moving at Tempest’s current pace, they hadn’t made it half way to the top of the trees before they heard someone coming down towards them; Jade had to reach up to steady her when she pulled back and nearly lost her grip on the tree. But the voices were unmistakeably Raksura, and it was a relief when one of Opal Night’s hunters dropped to a branch beside their hastily broken path. The steadier nature of the Arbora could only help here. “The consort said Emerald Twilight’s sister queen had been injured?”

Tempest glared dully, before easing over to sit on one of the branches. Jade and the hunter shared a look as the motion made her hiss, and Jade asked, “You have a hunting platform nearby?”

He nodded. “We can lead you there. The rest of my party is already clearing it out; we heard something huge crashing around over here, but we’d hoped no one from the colony was near it.”

Jade snorted at that, and Tempest hissed soft laughter as she helped her off the branch and started them both towards him. “Well, technically...” Jade started, and wasn’t at all surprised that he interrupted.

“You’re Moon’s queen, aren’t you?” he said, giving her a hard look over his shoulder as he climbed.

That... really should not have surprised her after the infinite parade of greetings and introductions Moon had been put through. She knew he’d made a point of talking to the occasional relative about his queen, just to make sure that the gossip spread to every corner of Opal Night. She’d thought at the time that it was cute but might become annoying; now she was reminded that part of a consort’s duty was to communicate more openly with the Arbora than queens generally did.

‘Keeping up with the gossip’ Pearl had called it, and found it annoying; but even if it hadn’t saved their lives here it had certainly made them easier, and she owed Moon an apology for underestimating how much he was learning to do a consort’s job. Even if he didn’t go about it the usual way.

When she passed Celadon carrying a mentor and two warriors carrying healers on her way to the colony and had to bank around to lead them to the platform, she revised the quality of the apology upward even as she wondered how to convey that to Moon. There had to be jewelry after something like this.

Maybe something in green that would set off his consort’s bracelet; that might also please Malachite next time they came to visit.

**Author's Note:**

> I could not figure out a way to get this into the story explicitly without ruining the feel of it, so if anyone was wondering, Tempest was poisoned, but not horribly. She will be perfectly fine, after an extended stay at Opal Night to recover. 
> 
> It's just that the Indigo Cloud Raksura have a bias against her and jumped to the wrong conclusion. 
> 
> Guess who gets to carry a message to Emerald Twilight to that effect, though. It's on their way, after all!


End file.
